Foxconn plans Chinese union vote

Foxconn, the contract manufacturer whose biggest customer is Apple, is preparing genuinely representative labour union elections in its factories in China for the first time, a powerful sign of the changes in the workshop of the world demanded by an increasingly restive workforce.

This would be the first such exercise at a large company in China, where labour unions have traditionally been controlled by management and local government. Foxconn is the countryâ€™s largest private sector employer with 1.2m mainland workers.